When A Good Man Goes To War
by moonlighter01
Summary: This is a fill for a prompt, an AU where the Doctor rescues Melody from Kovarian after dropping the Ponds back in Leadworth, but to do so he has to break some his rules and get even more blood in his hands. After getting Melody back, the Ponds help him find his inner Doctor again.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello to whoever happens to drop by and read this story! This is my first Doctor Who story ever, so I apologize for OOC or mistakes or general inaccuracy. Constructive criticism is always welcome, and thanks for taking your time to read.**

**Disclaimer: All rights belong to their respective owners. Doctor Who and all the characters are propierty of the BBC, I'm just borrowing them.**

It was a cold night outside. The wind was blowing with such force that the door to the bathroom hadn't stopped rattling for at least half an hour. The sound of the wind howling through the streets drowned out any other sound from the outside of their home.

Amy was lying on the bed with Rory by her side, her head resting on his bare chest, her hand caressing absent-mindedly his arm, while his was stroking lazily that spot just between her shoulder blades, his eyes closed.

Her eyes were half-lidded, gazing almost unseeingly at the wall opposite her, her mind lost in memories and half forgotten places, memories she didn't know were real or fake, and moments she remembered from a life that never was but that had apparently always been. More than one actually, if she strained her brain and forced herself to remember. She remembered being a scared little girl, alone in a house much too big for her praying to Santa in Easter because the crack in her wall was no ordinary crack. Then she remembered a man in a raggedy suit crashing into her aunt's shed, and at the same time she remembered nothing happening at all, the black sky only lit by the moonlight.

She remembered living with her aunt, the death of her parents hanging like a cloak over her, and at the same time she remembered all those birthdays he spent with her mom and dad, growing up with them and without them at the same time. She remembered a Doctor life and a Doctorless life, the memories so intertwined together that she feared if she pulled at one of them to look at it more closely, the rest would disassemble and collapse in a heap of could-have-beens and never-weres.

She remembered the weight of her baby girl on her arms, the little sound of contentment she had made when a Centurion-clad Rory had taken her into his arms, the feel of her soft skin on hers, the happy, gurgling sound she had made after settling on her lap. She also remembered the feel of her daughter slipping through her fingers, the feeling of utter despair when she had realized she was never going to see her baby girl again, the horror at realizing Rory had never even held her real daughter in his arms, but a copy that had disintegrated along with their hope and happiness.

And then she remembered the rage, the despair, the hatred and the feeling of decision, her demand to the Doctor that he brings their daughter back home. _'Then what is the point of you?' _had echoed back in her mind at that moment, and she remembered her willingness to spit it out again if her Raggedy Doctor did so much as mumble an 'it's impossible' in response to her pleas (_demands_).

Finally Rory's breathing evened out and deepened, his hand stopping midway through his caress and falling slowly to thump softly on the sheet-covered mattress. She spent a few more moments lying awake, thinking about hers and Rory's impossible life, about all the amazing and wonderful things she had experienced, like stepping on a place long forgotten or unknown, or one that no living human had ever seen, or feeling the warmness of an alien sun on her face. But she also thought of the not-so-great things, the danger, the uncertainty, the fear. She thought of Rory, waiting for two thousand years outside of a box. _Her_ box. And she thought about the Doctor. His childish personality masking his despair and weariness, his suffering and willingness to sacrifice himself and reticence to let anyone try to do so themselves, his belief that everything that ever happened was his fault. She knew he was far from perfect. He had made mistakes and still made them, he lied and he had killed. He had admitted he had destroyed his planet and killed his people (the fact that he had done so in order to save the whole Universe gave him no comfort). And he hated himself for it. She knew it. She knew he would have killed himself the moment he realized he had survived if he hadn't thought he was unworthy of the reprieve death would have given him. And then he had found a glimmer of hope that had kept him going. But those feelings had never disappeared, they had just been buried under happy memories and amazing people. He knew he still struggled and hated himself (_'there's only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you do'_). They - Amy, Rory and him - knew the lengths he'd go to in order to do something he believed was right. And they also knew what he'd think of himself afterwards, that he'd only add things to his pile of regrets, that he might even sink to that pit of self-hatred, despair, insanity and blurred lines of right and wrong he had fought so hard to climb out of.

All those thoughts were reverberating through her head, her eyelids growing heavy as her eyes started to close on their own accord when she heard it, a wheezing, groaning sound as familiar to her ears as a child's (_her child's_) weeping would be to their (_her_) parents. However, being as she was halfway between those two realms of the conscious and the unconscious, she wrote it off as one of those hallucinations that happened right before one succumbed to Morpheus, like the jerking sensation you feel when you think you are falling, or the little twitch your pinkie finger does spasmodically, responses to stimulus that weren't there, brought to the surface by her musings.

However, the insistent knocking that came afterwards aroused her from her drowsy state. The wind that had been howling moments ago had calmed slightly, making the sound of knuckles on wood distinguishable enough. She got up, carefully trying not to disturb her sleeping husband, considering whether she should wake him up or not. She decided against it, presuming that she could deal with whoever it was who had knocked on the door.

The knocking came again, louder and more frantic sounding than before and Amy, not wanting to waste more time, headed downstairs, wondering who it could be. By the time she had reached the front door, the wind had picked up again and she had already made up her mind and concluded it was probably a neighbour asking for help or a passerby in dire need of a phone because theirs had been knocked out of their hands by a wild gust of wind.

She opened the door, and took a sharp intake of breath, because there stood the man she had not expected (_not dared to expect for fear of having her hopes crushed_) - at least not a week after Demon's Run, and most definitely not at one in the morning on a windy night that reflected her and Rory's mood – the Doctor. She had not expected him, but she had wished for him to come. She had wanted her baby girl back, but she was no fool, she knew Kovarian wouldn't give her up easily, she knew that, if it hadn't been possible to defeat her the first time, then the second time wouldn't be any better.

And yet there he was.

Time seemed to freeze around her and she stopped registering the ever present wind, the rushing in her ears drowning out any other sound.

The first thing she noticed was how extremely tired he looked. In all her adventures with the Doctor she had seen plenty of him and his personality quirks and mannerisms, his childish outbursts, his joyous smiles, his big sad eyes, the glittering in his eyes when he saw something beautiful, the darkness hiding in the black recesses of his centuries' old mind. She had seen him dying and in pain, gasping for breath while condemning himself to permanent oblivion from the universe just so it could begin anew.

But she had never, not once, seen him like this. He was leaning on the door for support; his normally pale skin would have looked tanned in comparison to the translucent hue that it now sported.

The dark circles around his eyes were so pronounced that she would have been tempted to compare him to a panda bear, had she not been so darkly fascinated by the spectacle before her.

He was thinner, so, so thin that it was immediately evident that, although it had only been a week for the Ponds, it had been far longer for him. His battered (_raggedy_) and dirty tweed jacket no longer fitted his too thin frame, but hung almost comically from his shoulders. A blood stained bowtie, fastened but askew, around his neck, the edges threaded and weary.

A dripping sound drove her eyes to the ground, where slowly-but-steadily a small pool of blood was forming; the crimson liquid slipping from the Doctor's left fingers from a ragged-edged gash she could see on the back of his hand and smaller, shallow cuts on his fingers. A dark stain had seeped through the thick fabric of his jacket in his left upper arm and armpit, partially invading his left upper chest. Looking back at his face, her brain now registered the deep, scarred over gash on his forehead above his barely-there eyebrow, dried blood on his face, neck and bowtie and matting his wild, longer-than-usual hair, probably because it had smeared when he had run his hand through it.

All those observations took no longer than five seconds, because then she looked at his right arm, an arm that was protectively wound around a little bundle of white and she knew, she _just_ knew, her chest bubbling up and swelling with something akin to wonder and happiness and relief, all mixed up together with something far darker tugging at the edge of her mind, something she didn't want to admit or acknowledge although it was staring her right in the face.

She squealed a little, and didn't even care, as she looked at the baby wrapped in a blanket in her Raggedy Doctor's arm. She looked up and found his face again, and he gave her a tired and weary smile as he stretched his arm slowly and handed her daughter to her. A smile that was meant to be reassuring, to convey the feeling that everything was alright, to calm her and support her and make her happy again.

And that's when the bubble bursts, and Amy is left there, with her sleeping baby girl cradled in her arms (_and her weight is so familiar and yet so alien to her_), staring at the heartbreaking truth she had not dared consider, the suspicions and hints taking form, rearing their ugly heads and head butting her in the chest.

Because she can see it, right there reflected in his eyes when he tries to smile, to fake and pretend he's okay, she can see the darkness, the bottom of the seemingly endless pit he had fallen down while on his quest. There is nothing left of the warmness and joy that used to bathe his eyes, they're cold, desperate, shallow, empty and still have an air of calculating to them. And she's afraid. Not of him, not now, not when she's so grateful for what he's done, but _for_ him. Because she's afraid he's stepped over the final line, the line his companions have fought to keep him from. She's afraid he's gone way too far; that he'll wake up one day, realize what he's done, and do something to himself that they and the Universe would forever regret.

She doesn't know how to feel. She knows she should feel guilty, or be scared of the endless darkness that inches closer and closer to devouring what's left of his best friend, because she knows the man in front of her isn't the same man that took her to Starship UK, or to England during World War II. That man is gone, buried and drowning under all the blood his hands are stained of.

But she can't. She can't bring herself to consider him something less than her hero right now. Amy knows he's always been a hero (whether he's believed it or not), but right now he's not _a _hero, he's _her_ hero. And normally there wouldn't be a difference between those two terms, but now there is, because she is aware that whatever he's done, it isn't right, that he'd be considered ruthless, cruel, and even evil (and he'd be the first to call himself that), she knows that if someone else had done the same, hero isn't the term she'd use to describe them.

If you fight fire with fire, you are bound to get burnt. And the Doctor had burnt so much he was halfway to becoming ash. She knew that, once the darkness and rage dulled (and they would, with a little time), all the things he'd done would weigh him down, like all the other things he'd done. After the Time War, he'd found Rose. After losing Rose, he'd found first Donna and then Martha. And after separating from Martha, he'd found Donna again. After losing everything and everyone once again, he had found her and Rory. And they weren't about to let him go. She knew he wouldn't open up; he wouldn't dare burden them with the weight of his mistakes and deeds. It had taken a lot of time for him to tell her about his life before he met her, and she knew he had left most of the details out.

He would try his hardest to preserve the little innocence they had left, even if it meant not seeing them again. Both Ponds knew he blamed himself for everything that went wrong, for every little mishap that happened. But neither of them would change a single moment of it, because they knew that every thing that happened to them, either good or bad, little or big, had made them who they were today. And one thing they both were and had always been, even before meeting the Doctor, was stubborn. They wouldn't give up, neither Rory nor her would let him go, knowing that the moment he steps back on the TARDIS he'll disappear forever, because he's ashamed of what he's done, of what he's become, of what happened in the first time that forced him to break his rules and do what he so firmly believes is wrong.

And he doesn't want them to be near the shame and regret that threatens to consume him from the inside out.

Their eyes lock, and they hold their gazes steadily, he's looking for some kind of reaction from her, approval or disgust, happiness or repulsion, something, _anything_, that told him he had done something right, something to help him ease some of the pain that was haunting his mind and hearts. She isn't sure whether he finds it or not, but then he makes his mind, he gives a little nod, more to himself than to her, and starts to turn around. But Amy's having none of that.

"Oi, where do you think you're going?"

He looks back to her, then his gaze wanders down towards Melody and drops to the floor and back to her face.

"Rory! Come here, now!" she shouts as hard as she can.

She tries to grab the Doctor's hand to keep him from fleeing, but he flinches back and takes a step back, and Amy takes her hand back as if she's just been burnt. He must see the hurt that flashes in her eyes before she can rein her emotions, because his gaze drops again, and he lets out a mumbled "I'm sorry", and Amy realizes those are the first words he's spoken since he arrived. His voice is hoarse, as if he's not used it in days, or has used it too much (_screams and yells and threats_) and she knows his throat must be raw, but that is the least of their worries, especially if they can't keep him from fleeing like a scared animal.

She hears Rory rush down the stairs, and she can almost see him, tugging his shirt on and skipping the last couple of steps to end up right next to her. He lets out an articulate "Oh" when he sees the Doctor, and she doesn't need to see the way his brow creases with worry when he notices the state the Doctor is in to know he's starting to notice everything (if not more) that she has realized mere moments before, but then he registers Amy, and his eyes widen and a laugh escapes from his mouth when he sees Melody on her arms. She looks up at his face, and finds him looking down at his sleeping daughter, tears welling up in his eyes, his hand ghosting over her sleeping face, not daring to touch her for fear of waking her from her slumber, and she can't help but smile at the sight.

He tears his gaze from Melody to look up towards the Doctor, and the "thank you" dies in his lips when he realizes the Doctor has started to walk away taking advantage of their distraction, his retreating form a dark blur in the windy night.

"Doctor, wait, please!" he shouts, the sound half drown out by the wind, but the Doctor keeps walking stubbornly, paying no heed to Rory, his tweed jacket flapping behind him.

"Oh no, you don't" he mutters, and takes after him, the wind tousling his already sleep-dishevelled hair , leaving Amy standing on her doorstep with her sleeping baby cradled in her arms.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello again! This is dedicated to all of you who are still interested in this story, and those who have read, favorited, followed or reviewed. Thanks! I hope you like it. I think the next chapter will be the last, though I only have a very vague draft in my head. Anyway, allons-y!**

Rory starts to actually, properly worry by the time he catches up with the Doctor, because, although his drunk-giraffe-looking stance might trick people into thinking he could trip over his own shadow (and he would, forty five percent of the time), the Doctor could walk faster than almost anyone he had ever met. The fact that he had managed to get to him before he got to the TARDIS confirmed his suspicions that the Doctor was as far from okay as he could get.

He placed himself in front of the Doctor, facing him, and crossed his arms over his chest. The Doctor stopped a few feet away from him, but showed no interest in looking at him, his gaze firmly glued to the ground. None of them spoke for a while, and the air was so thick with tension that Rory thought there might be a tangible, invisible wall separating them both. Then the Doctor sighed and looked up, his shoulders slumped in defeat, and Rory found himself taking a reflexive step towards the Time Lord, his compassionate nature taking over when he saw the hopeless expression that marred the other man's face. He slowly reached out and grabbed the Doctor lightly by the arm, and when he made no move to jerk back, he wrapped him in a tight hug. He felt the Doctor's body go tense for a split second before relaxing into the embrace.

"You look awful" are the first words to leave his mouth when the hug ends, and the Doctor lets out a mirthless laugh, a brittle, hollow sound that seeps into Rory's bones and makes his very essence shiver.

He almost expects the Doctor's trademark 'I'm okay, I'm the King of Okay' babble, but instead he gets a half-hearted "Well, at least I'm not the one with drool all over their chin, you know" and a mock offended expression which fools neither him nor the Doctor.

"Why?" he asks next, and the Doctor shrugs his right shoulder and looks at him questioningly.

"Why what?" he asks back, trying to feign ignorance and failing miserably, and Rory can't help but roll his eyes, wondering for the hundredth time how this alien (_man_), whose first rule is 'The Doctor lies' can be such a bad liar sometimes.

"That's not going to work with me, and you know it" he answers, and the Doctor relents, the little fight he might have had left draining out of his body and leaving only tiredness in its wake.

"Why not? There is no point in staying, is there? There are always planets to walk on, civilizations to visit, galaxies to see. I can't stay in one place for too long, you know that, I get all twitchy and humany and the next thing you know I'll be mowing your backyard with the TARDIS parked in your living room" the Doctor answers, and although he had meant it as a joke, a deflection, Rory catches a glimpse of the truth behind his words, his hidden admission that he knew he didn't belong in that part of their lives, and that he understood they had two lives – Doctor life and human life – that, like oil and water, could be shaken around, but not mixed together.

Rory doesn't know what to answer to that, so he changes his approach, writing a mental note to broach the subject later. Taking a closer look at the Doctor, he notices that all the scrapes are scarred over and all the blood is dry except for his left hand, which has been bleeding, though now more sluggishly, since he first saw him.

"What's happened to your hand?" he asks, pointing to it, and the Doctor does his best to clumsily hide it behind his back. When he realizes it's not worked, he mumbles something unintelligible while he looks away, fidgeting a bit in his place.

"Doctor…" he warns, pouring a bit of his inner, authoritative Roman out.

"I might or might not have punched the TARDIS earlier" the Doctor says as fast as he can, and Rory is sure that the noise that comes out of his throat is a mixture between utter disbelief and baffled horror.

"You did what? Why would you do that?"

"She kept getting the date wrong!" the Doctor answers defensively, hanging onto his lame excuse by a thread.

"Yeah, right. Let me see. And give me your handkerchief please."

When the Doctor doesn't move, he sighs and beckons him over.

"If you think either Amy or I would let you simply walk away after bringing Melody back, offering no explanations, not uttering a word and dripping blood all over the place, you are seriously madder than we thought in the first place. What sort of people do you think we are? Do you think we'd actually let our best friend go when he needs us the most? Now come here or you'll have to face the rage of a very angry Scottish woman and the water pistol she uses on the carol singers on Christmas."

Begrudgingly, the Doctor extends his left hand, wincing slightly when he lifts his arm, and takes a polka-dotted handkerchief out of his right trouser pocket.

Silence stretches on while Rory takes a look at the injured hand, which luckily seems to have stopped bleeding almost completely, and he starts dabbing at it lightly with the piece of cloth the Doctor had given him. He hears the Doctor hiss in pain, but no words leave his mouth, and after a few more minutes of silence, Rory can't help but say "You know, I think you haven't been this quiet since that time you got electrocuted and passed out in Venice and we had to drag you to Guido's house."

When that elicits no response, he looks up to the Doctor's face, and sees the Time Lord's gaze is unfocused, looking straight ahead but not seeing him.

He can't tear his gaze from his eyes. Under the dim light pouring from the street lamp above them, he can see an unfathomable darkness pooling in the Doctor's eyes, and he knows that wherever (_and whenever_) the Doctor is in his head right now, it isn't Leadworth or Venice, and neither Amy nor him are there either.

He stands there, like a deer caught in the headlights, not knowing what to do, while seconds stretch like hours and he is sure that if by any chance the wind stopped, the only sounds he'd hear would be their breaths tangled in the night and the echoes of battle and war and bloodshed that were pouring through the Doctor's mind, threatening to expand and invade everything around them.

Then a gust of wind hits the Doctor in the face, and Rory sees him snap back to the present, his eyes clearing (though not completely, all this time there's always been a thin layer of darkness clinging to them) and he reflexively jerks his hand back, and Rory, caught off guard, lets it slip from his fingers, while the Doctor places his arms in front of his face, hands curled into fists, in both a defensive and an attack stance. Then his gaze focuses on Rory, and he lets his arms fall limply to his sides, clears his throat awkwardly and says a bit hoarsely "You know, I think I can manage on my own on the TARDIS, but thank you."

"You stupid… Am I going to have to speak in Latin to get the message through that thick skull of yours? You. Are. Not. Going. Away. Come on, you can barely stay on your feet, I've seen drunk cats with more coordination than you have right now."

"Have you even stopped to think that maybe I don't _want _to stay here? That maybe I want to get into my ship and get as far away from you all as soon as I can?" The Doctor snaps, raising his voice, and though those words sting at his core, he refuses to let them be more than an attempt at distraction, like the desperate jab of a cornered, frightened animal.

"No, I haven't, because we both now that's not true. That's the last thing anyone would want to do right now."

"And how would you know?! Eh?! Tell me, how would you know?! He shouts, desperation and a twinge of hopelessness slipping into his voice and turning his accusation into a desperate plea.

"I did my share of waiting, remember? And in two thousands years you see a lot of things. You see empires rise and fall in the blink of an eye, you see people come and go like flecks of dust in a whirlwind, you see battles and wars, self-appointed messiahs and their acolytes and warriors falling bloodied and broken to the ground next to the men they called enemies. And though I'm sure I haven't seen half of the things you've _lived_, I've seen enough to know that the last thing any living creature in this Universe would want is to be left alone with their demons."

"It's better to see my demons in my nightmares than to have to face them every time I open my eyes. Being with you hurts too much. And I'm too tired to pretend that I'm not hurting anymore."

"And don't Amy, Melody and I get a say in that? Have you even stopped to think that maybe it _hurts_ us to see you leave?" Rory snaps back, quoting the Doctor's previous sentence back to him.

The Doctor stands there, in stunned silence, looking at Rory as if he had grown a second head. That is all the distraction he needs to grab the Doctor's uninjured hand and start to drag him towards his house again. After the few first moments, during which the Doctor lets himself be dragged around, he realizes what's happening and tries to break free, the hint of a protest coming out of his mouth, but Rory's not to be deterred.

"I once dragged the Pandorica out of a warehouse in the middle of the London Blitz, you think I'm not strong enough to overpower an alien who right now seems to weigh minus 20 pounds?"

After a few more tugs, the Doctor finally relents, but Rory doesn't let his hand go, all he does is stop for a moment and wrap one-handedly the handkerchief around the Doctor's hand.

Then they are in his doorstep again, in front of Amy, who mouths Rory a 'Thank you' as she hands him the sleeping Melody (and Rory is surprised that the baby is still so sound asleep, though knowing her mother, it isn't shocking that his daughter sleeps like a log) and then hugs the Doctor so tightly that in the dim light it's hard to tell where his body ends and hers begins.

The Doctor flails his arms for a moment, not really sure what to do with them, until he decides to wrap them tentatively around Amy.

They stay like that for what seems both like seconds and years, and when they separate they silently walk back into the house, Rory closing the front door behind him while Amy walks a subdued and quiet Doctor to their living room, then sits down on the couch next to him. Rory chooses the armchair next to them, and absent-mindedly rocks the sleeping Melody back and forth in his arms. When they are all settled, Amy quietly asks, in a small voice that seems extremely out of place for her "Are you okay?", and maybe it's her tone, the way her Scottish accent seems even more pronounced, the little tremor in her voice she tries to hide, or maybe it's none of those things or all of them mixed together, but the Doctor finds himself unable to lie to her.

"No, I'm not. I- I'm far from okay Amy, and I'm scared, I don't know what to do, and isn't that funny, the great, mighty Doctor, frightened and scared like a child? What have I become? Amy, please, tell me, because I don't know. I don't deserve you or Rory or anyone, when's the last time I did something good for you? When's the last time I didn't actually mess something up?"

"You just brought our daughter back, isn't that 'something good for us'?"

"But she got taken and it was my fault in the first place! She would have been safe if it hadn't been for me. I _fixed _something I messed up. Can't you see, Amy, all I leave is a trail of destruction behind me. How am I expected to carry on living knowing that?"

Rory opens his mouth, ready to protest, but Amy beats him to it, her voice hard, willing him to understand.

"She wouldn't have been born if it hadn't been _for you_, for the TARDIS, for that wedding night we had _because of you._"

"Of course she would have! She would have been born, you two would have got married and would have lived a good life together without having to worry about aliens and space and wars."

"And I would have never saved a space whale from death and torture; I wouldn't have met Winston Churchill, or Vincent Van Gogh. I wouldn't have seen what a far away galaxy looks like; I wouldn't have floated into space. I would have missed so many wonderful things, Doctor. We would have never met _you._ How do you expect me, us, to give all that up? You don't have the right to make our choices for us. What we choose to do, we do it because we want to, not because you force us to. Remember that. Please, just remember that."

"I try to, I swear I do, but sometimes, it's just too much Amy. I've done so many things I'm ashamed of, so many things I regret, and awful things that I'm ashamed to admit I don't regret at all. I've travelled alone for too long, I've lost that sparkle I once had, I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. I want to stay with you and never let you go and at the same time, every time I look at you I'm reminded of all my flaws and I feel like running off and hiding away and saving you before it's too late. What do I do?" he pleads, and in that moment he looks and sounds like a lost boy, and something breaks inside of them.

"You stay here with us, at least for a while, Doctor." Rory interjects, and when the Doctor opens his mouth to protest, Amy shushes him with a finger on his lips.

"You're exhausted, look awful, are thinner than a broomstick and look like you haven't slept in ages. You aren't going anywhere." Amy says with finality in her voice, shooting him a glare that says 'dare me', and the Doctor can't help but smile.

"There's no getting rid of you both, is there?"

"No" Rory and Amy say smiling at the same time, but then Rory sobers up and places a hand on the Doctor's shoulder.

"You know, you don't have to keep it all bottled up inside. You don't have to carry that burden alone. You can tell us what you want. What you can, whatever it is you feel like sharing. I know you _won't _tell us everything, and I'm not asking you to. But you need to know that we won't judge you, I promise we will not. You know I can't say everything we've been through has been perfect, but although we have been through bad times, desperate and tired and hopeless, we have also been through extremely good things, we've been happy, we still are, we have enough fantastic memories to last for a lifetime, and it's all thanks to you. So thank you, for everything."

The Doctor smiles gratefully, and he doesn't realize he's crying until Amy gently wipes a tear off his cheek with her thumb.

"Thank you" he says, and then, as an afterthought adds, more to himself than to them

"I might not be okay, but I will be. _We_ will be."


End file.
